Back to the future: Data caps may return to Comcast within 5 years [Updated]

In May 2012, Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen announced the company was suspending the 250-gigabyte hard data cap it had imposed on its Internet customers. Instead, Comcast would experiment with tiered service in some markets, but in most – including Houston – there would be no restrictions.

“The headline today should be: There isn’t a cap anymore,” Cohen told investors and reporters during a conference call. “We’re out of the cap business.”

Indeed, if you’re a Houston Comcast Internet subscriber, you’ll see a notation on your online account’s data meter that says the 250-GB cap is not being enforced.

Fast-forward two years. Now, Cohen is predicting that Comcast will be back in “the cap business” within five years.

Today, Comcast has caps in place in about 10 markets. In most of those cases, customers have 300-GB limits and are charged $10 for each 50 GB over the limit. While that’s a much more humane approach than Comcast’s initial cap setup – in which customers who went over the 250-GB limit could be cut off from Internet access for a full year – it’s still a data cap.

But unless usage-based billing become a regulatory issue in the Comcast-TWC merger – or possibly in the FCC’s deliberations over new Net Neutrality rules – Comcast customers should resign themselves to the fact that caps eventually will return. Comcast won’t stay out of the cap business for much longer.

Update 5.16.2014: David Cohen has backpedaled on his data cap prediction. In a blog post, Cohen says his comments were “picked up out of context and misinterpreted in a number of places”, and that Comcast has no plans to institute data caps at the moment.

If you made me predict today, and I don’t want to get myself in any trouble, if you may be predict today, I would predict that in five years Comcast at least would have a usage-based billing model rolled out across its footprint.

Sound like he did indeed get himself into trouble, and has had to step back as a result.

He also says in the blog post that Comcast is “looking at” adding unlimited tiers in those markets where it has reintroduced caps.

The update was spotted at Glass, Quartz’s excellent new site devoted to covering television in all its forms.